On 8 September in Berlin, officers from the Seed Money Facility (SMF) for the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) met applicants for seed money to discuss their project ideas. The SMF has so far received about 35 project ideas for consultation.

At the meeting, the officers did not only explain technical and organisational specificities of seed money to applicants, but they also gave feedback on the project content, aligned with the respective Policy Area or Horizontal Action Coordinator.

“Close exchange between the coordinators, the funding facility and the applicants is a lot of effort on all sides”, says Patricia Bohland of the EUSBSR Seed Money Facility. “Yet, such trilateral discussion of project ideas is necessary at an early stage to make sure that upcoming EU funded projects will actually implement the Strategy”.

The project ideas sent in so far cover almost all policy areas, such as innovation and culture as well as horizontal actions, such as climate change and neighbours. The decision of which project ideas are awarded seed money will be taken at the end of this year.

EUSBSR seed money is EU funding to prepare projects that contribute to one of the policy areas or horizontal actions of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. 70 project ideas have been granted seed money since 2013. The EUSBSR Seed Money Facility is run by Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein (IB.SH) with funds from the European Parliament. For more information, please visit seed.eusbsr.eu.